Wednesday, January 15, 2025
D+71
1973 US President Richard Nixon suspended all US offensive action in North Vietnam
In bed at 9, awake at 2:30, unable to sleep, and up at 3:10. Temperature is 7°, the wind chill -4°, the humidity inside the house is 16%, and the room humidifier in the living room apparently has no effect.
Prednisone, day 246, 5 mg. + 2.5 mg., day 8. 5 mg. prednisone at 4:30 a.m. Other meds at 11:15 a.m. 2.5 mg. prednisone at 4:20 p.m.
Wisconsin in January. Walomg up to single digit temperature triggers two thoughts. First, we truly miss Lilly but I'm glad she's not going outside in this bitter cold for her morning relief. Second, I am remembering the job I had in my senior year at Marquette, 1962-1963, stuffing the Milwaukee Sentinel boxes at bus stops in the middle of the night Each night, Sunday through Friday, I would go to bed early, get up in the middle of the night, walk from 25th and Vine to 7th and Galena to pick up my truck, drive to the Journal loading dock, pick up my newspapers, and drive my assigned route, first "Route 12" on the near South Side of Milwaukee, later "Downtown East" of the river. At each stop I had to remove the unsold papers from the day before, unlock the coin box where the quarters were deposited, and load in the current day's newspapers. It is the unlocking and locking the coin box that I'm remembering this morning. On bitter cold nights, I had to wear gloves but I needed to take them off to open the coin box lock with my key while avoiding the skin of my fingers freezing to the metal lock. Because of the working hours and often nasty weather conditions, it was a hard job, but the pay was good, we got to use the daily collections to buy breakfast at George Webb's as a fringe benefit, and I saved enough money to buy my first car, a gorgeous Chinese Red Buick convertible with a white ragtop, my "pimpmobile." It was the car that we had when Anne and I were married on 6/15/63, that we had in Quantico, and that took us from Brunswick, Georgia, to Yuma, Arizona in the Spring of 1964. Here's how I wrote it up in my memoir:
I took a job driving a Milwaukee Sentinel truck in the middle of the night, stuffing newspaper boxes at bus stops all over the city. My first route was on the north side. After a couple of months, I picked up a south side route. Sunday through Friday nights, I would go to bed at 8 or 9 o’clock, get up at 11 or so and walk from 24th and Vine to the Journal Company garage at 6th and Galena, pick up my truck, drive to the Journal building on State Street, pick up my papers, stuff a multitude of bus stop boxes and collect the change from the locked coin receptacles, return to the Journal building with the coins and yesterday’s unsold papers, drive back to the garage, drop off the truck, walk back to 24th and Vine around 4 in the morning and hope to get a few hours of sleep before my first class. My last route was ‘downtown east,’ from the river to the lake, the harbor to Ogden Street. I didn’t start working until 1 in the morning and was done by 4, so I got more sleep than with the longer routes.
I liked the Sentinel job except when the streets were covered with snow or when the weather was bitter cold, which it often was during the winter of 1962-63. That was the winter when I learned how to dress appropriately for Wisconsin winters, wearing good boots, many layers of clothing, warm headgear and heavy hooded sweatshirts. We wore gloves, of course, but sometimes the lock on the coin box was frozen or at an odd angle or reluctant for any reason to respond to the key. Then, the gloves had to come off and the challenge was to retrieve the coins without having fingers freeze to the Master Lock or to the cold sheet metal of the coin box. During and after big snowstorms, the first challenge was to maintain traction and control of the large panel trucks we drove. The second challenge was to negotiate the high snow and ice piles around the Sentinel boxes, a job only for the young and agile.
The streets were usually empty as I drove around the city and I became very efficient covering all the Sentinel boxes on my routes. Life was good until the Sentinel ran a story criticizing the police for mooching free sandwiches at Frenchie’s Restaurant, a then elegant eatery where Beans and Barley is now. After that story appeared, the cops started ticketing us Sentinel drivers for driving as we had always driven on our middle-of-the-night rounds, going through red lights when there was no traffic, making U-turns at will, leaving the truck running while we stuffed the boxes, etc. It was real chickenshit, aimed at the Journal Company employees at the absolute bottom of the employee totem pole. The experience contributed to my negative feelings about the Milwaukee Police Department.
During the senior year, I was elected president of the Anchor and Chain Society, the midshipmen’s social organization. We put on the annual Navy Ball at the Wisconsin Club, sponsored smokers, built a float for the Homecoming Parade, put out an annual called The Porthole and did other stuff which I have long since forgotten. I was not eager to hold the president’s job but was talked into standing for election by my roommates, especially Ed who was more gregarious and outgoing than I was and not surprisingly became my social chairman.
As graduation grew near, I quit the Sentinel job. I had made enough money to support myself till graduation (along with the $50 monthly stipend from the Navy Department) and to buy my first car, a long, sleek, 1961 Chinese red Buick LeSabre convertible with a white top, whitewall tires, and “skirts” covering the rear wheel wells, in a word: a real pimpmobile.
It's interesting to think about what one thinks around 4 o'clock on a bitter cold morning, wishing one were in one's warm bed, sleeping, at least when the "one" is me..I have thought more than once as I write these memoirs, I could have started the story as Steve Martin did in The Jerk: “I was born a poor black child.” My dad was a drug abuser and often unemployed, we lived off my mother’s earnings, my mother held the family together, I engaged in criminal conduct as an adolescent and when I had the money to buy a car, I bought a pimpmobile. No wonder I felt at home at the House of Peace.
Esper wrote that Trump asked him at least twice if the Pentagon could "shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs" and "no one would know it was us." During the 2020 George Floyd protests, Trump sought to deploy 10,000 active duty troops in Washington, asking Esper about protestors, "Can't you just shoot them?" He wrote Trump's top domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller sought to send 250,000 troops to the southern border on the premise that a large caravan of migrants was en route; Esper wrote he responded the Pentagon did not "have 250,000 troops to send to the border for such nonsense." As White House officials watched a live video feed of the raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Esper said Miller proposed beheading al-Baghdadi, dipping his head in pig's blood and parading it around to warn other terrorists. He said he told Miller that would be a war crime; Miller flatly denied the episode occurred. Esper characterized Trump as "an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service."
How will Pete Hegseth relate to Trump and Trump to Hegseth? I shudder to think of it. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial this morning arguing - accurately - that the Republicans on the Armed Services Committee gave Hegseth a pass yesterday, asking no hard questions, and "Democrats mostly played into Mr. Hegseth’s hands with questions he easily parried." Shame on the Republicans and shame on most of the Democrats, even Ranking Member Jack Reed, whose questioning was pathetic. The hearing was a national disgrace. Our NATO allies were surely watching the hearing carefully, realizing that the world is about to change and not in a good way.
O frabjous day, callooh callay! Two Eastern Bluebirds at our feeders at 9:15.
Acci-Dent. Geri followed me to the body shop to get the Volvo repaired from the mishap on December 3, taking Lilly to Blue Pearl. I feel stranded without the car in the garage or on the driveway.
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